What to do about him? While I am pondering this most challenging of questions, I see that I have received a new e-mail. When I check, it is from Kimberley again:

You kind of threw me just then. I guess I hadn’t really thought through what it must mean to you. I was holding out on one thing, but I guess if we’re going to be lovers I’ll have to share it with you. Just be careful how you use it and try to cover the trail: [email protected].

Ah, the immediacy of modern communications! I think I would have preferred the age of sail, when letters took months to travel from one continent to another and one might easily have died of cholera or heatstroke before knowing how one’s heart has been treated by the special correspondent on the other side of the world. But this is the twenty-first century, after all, and when in Babylon, one must do as the Babylonians do. A couple of clicks brings up our standard advertisement for the Old Man’s Club. I add the single line Hello from Nong Jitpleecheep and your loving son Sonchai, before zinging it off to Superman alias my biological father. I guess it’s the kind of early-morning message every middle-aged man with those kinds of skeletons in the cupboard least wants to receive. We’ll never hear from him, right?

I call my mother and tell her about Kimberley ’s e-mail, keeping to myself for the moment the fact that I’ve just taken the irrevocable step of sending him a message.

A long silence. Whispering: “She really got those details from the FBI?”

“Yes.”

“It’s been thirty-three years, Sonchai. I don’t know if I can handle this.” A muffled sound that could have been anything-surely not an uncontrolled sob? But she does hang up immediately, which is not like her at all.

Now I’m alone with him again. Hero and substance abuser, successful lawyer, lousy husband, absentee father (at least in my case). Lost soul?

My cell phone is ringing again. “Would you mind telling me what you intend to do?”

I confess that I’ve sent Superman her cyberversion of “Hello Sailor!” with our family name attached. A gasp. “Have you lost your magic tortoise? Sonchai, you could have at least discussed it with me. Don’t you have any respect?”

“He’s my father.”

She hangs up again. I shrug. When I call Bangkok Airways, they tell me there are nine flights per day to Hat Yai, only two a week to Songai Kolok. I book the next flight to Hat Yai.

12

FYI:

Roughly translated, the full name of our capital means: “Great city of angels, the repository of divine gems, the great land unconquerable, the grand and prominent realm, the royal and delightful capital city full of nine noble gems, the highest royal dwelling and grand palace, the divine shelter and living place of reincarnated spirits.”

Phonetically it goes like this: “ Krung Thep mahanakhon bowon rattanakosin mahintara ayuthaya mahadilok popnopparat ratcha-thani burirom-udomratchaniwet mahasathan-amonpiman-avatansathri-sakkathatityavisnukamprasit.”

There’s no Bangkok in it.

TWO. The South

13

On the flight to the deep South I sit next to two young sex tourists who are chuckling over a familiar chestnut:

“So I paid her bar fine and took her back to my room for an all-night, and when I went to use the bathroom in the morning, canyabelieveit, she’s actually been squatting on the seat-there are foot marks all over it.”

This particular story always annoys me. I think it does illustrate the cultural gap though, not because the girls are used to squatting, but because Westerners find it so important and shocking. I guess the toilet is right at the center of the farang mind, just as Buddha is with us, no? I’m afraid I could not resist an intervention.

“Recent research shows that people who squat rarely if ever suffer from cancer of the colon,” I tell the young fellow next to me (headscarf, nose stud, three-quarter walking shorts, and T-shirt).

A quizzical look. “That right?”

“Yes, soon you’ll all be squatting over there too. It’ll take a while to catch on, there’ll be squat-ins, everyone will have to go to classes, there’ll be how-to best-sellers with illustrations, talk-show hosts will demonstrate how it’s done, missionaries will be dispatched to other countries.”

“Huh?”

Isn’t universal education a wonderful thing? I turn away to stare out the window at weightless white puffs, still irritated, until I remember the venerable Monsieur Truffaut, who hired my mother for a few months in Paris when I was young. There was a squatters’ toilet even in his cinquième arrondissement apartment. My mother always respected him-and the French-for that. Actually, my mother and I both prefer to squat. Neither of us has ever suffered any kind of bowel disorder in our lives, by the way, farang.

In Hat Yai I catch a cab to the railway station.

Train: I think we must have bought our rolling stock from the British in the heyday of empire; I imagine an Edwardian in worsted wool somewhere in the English Midlands calculating that if he left out the upholstery, he could fit in one more native per seat. After half an hour the slats have imprinted themselves on my bum, which I am sure must resemble a wicket.

Scenery: Small black violin-shaped birds sing in unison on telephone wires, a silver-gray buffalo with long horns blunders across a field, naked kids play in a stream, the grass is the same green as a card table, in flooded fields the first frail shoots of this year’s second rice harvest; everything distorts with heat. You could say the landscape changes dramatically from Hat Yai on south, though not for any reason of geography. All of a sudden the women working the fields are wearing Islamic headscarves and long skirts. Many are in black from head to foot. It is not in the nature of our women to cover their faces or affect prudishness, but the statement is unambiguous: this is another country. The men, too, wear Islamic headgear, either the skullcaps that so resemble those of their Hebrew brothers, or flowerpot-shaped things that cling to the sides of their heads. It is early evening, just before sunset, and the cries of invisible muezzins calling the faithful to invisible country mosques haunt the gathering dusk. Fear settles on my shoulder for a long haul. Anything can happen down here.

It’s dark by the time the train reaches Songai Kolok, and my instinct is to check the town out first, before contacting Mustafa.

It looks as if every second building on the main street is a form of rentable accommodation. I toy with the idea of using one of the seedier ones for old times’ sake (I could produce an encyclopedia of the dives Mum and I stayed in overseas, when she was commuting between johns) but decide against. I will have a Muslim guide to massage, after all, so I choose what looks like the biggest and best. It’s called Gracious Palace in Thai, Malaysian, and English and manages to be big, expensive, dingy, overlit, and sleazy all at once. At reception they issue me with towels, soap, and three condoms. Well, you can’t say they’re not taking HIV seriously.

Half an hour later I have showered and changed my clothes (generic black shoes, black pants, white shirt as usual); I am strolling through the town and beginning to get the picture. What I like best is the police station. It’s a big, even majestic building encircled by a perimeter wall, on the outside of which there are maybe three hundred little bamboo huts leaning against it and a girl or two in each hut. The huts are not brothels, of course-they’re too small for that. They pretend to sell food and drink, and some of them even have small fridges with beer, but there’s no mistaking the point of the exercise.